Saturday, June 25, 2016

Sabana has good discount to NAV and good yield, but look beyond numbers.

I have not seen management killing messengers. When rating company S&P reduced it credit rating, what did it do? It requested that credit rating to be withdrawn. It's loans are no longer rated and the reason given is it is unnecessary as rated or not, it's a 45% ceiling.

Really? Then why do companies go for rating? To have a lower cost of borrowing! Just look at the terms of loans for LMIR before and after rating. If I am Kevin, I would give a proper explanation, perhaps assuring investors That loans from the shari' ah compliant loans are not rating sensitive.

The only numbers u should look at for Sabana is now price. How much fall it would go before it become a fallen angel/ turnaround play? Beware of fallen devil though.

Their disposal recently? Is it a good deal? I leave it to you, to see the bright spots. I do not need to search high and low for bright spots when A-reit announced its disposal.

Their ability to retain master-leases and their ability to manage their portfolio when it become multi-tenants leases, how long did they take to fill occupancy of acquisitions.

Their high tech building Acquisition at 50% occupancy, I remember giving them the benefit of doubts of 2 quarters. I no longer follow their reports. U can find out the chai chee building occupancy, compare it with Asperia.

Since I am not into turnaround or fallen angels play, I will give it a miss. I would think Silverlake looks more like a turnaround play.

Holiday is a more relaxed time. More time to talk "male chicken" and most importantly more time to observe people, reflect on myself and hear carefully what other said.

1) Procrasination

My close friend has some financial difficulties. I didn't ask the details as I am

Not prepared for another loan for him. There is some delay in the confirmation of his contract. So I asked if he is willing to stay with current terms for another 3 -6 months. This is the second delay already.

I told him if he find a better alternative, just go. In the meantime, someone approached me for tuition again. I immediately recommended him. So I ask him to give my friend a call. It's another one of those lucrative assignment where the rate is not a problem (of course you don't exhort people, but I think 50-60 an hour will not be issue.) I gave him the contact and ask him to call. He said Monday he is busy. This is the second referral that didn't go anywhere. My referrals are all blue-chip customers if u know what I mean.

I thought to myself, I would have given her a call, try to manage another date instead of just letting it go, especially if I am in need of money.

I know my friend quite well, he is still the same, we are buddies during university day. He is kind of perfectionist and live with ideals and principles. I am already a man-whore after 10 years into working. I dun betray my core beliefs but anything else, u ask me to jump, I jump. When my P ask me to change the way we do mid-autumn, I don't ask why, I say I need more budget. LOL.

2) There is no careless mistake in mathematics.

Huh? Why? I have been careless before. Apparently, both the HOD and LH think the same, the carelessness is due to lack of practice, lack of sensitivity to numbers or lack of familiarity to way questions are phrased.

It is rather thought provoking and very true. Maybe it is a bit extreme, there could be genius 1 careless mistake. But I would have agree with them if more than 1 careless mistake is made

3) Personally, personality profiling is bullshit.

As part of training, we were again doing these personality profile, with the purpose of understanding ourselves and others.

I have a lot of respect for the speaker. She is entertaining in presentation, enlightening and sobering when she shared her clients' cases/ stories. But, true to be told, I am profiled to be lacking in "firmness" aka assertiveness in my socializing in one test and "critical" in another test. *bullshit. I think I am both critical and lax in different circumstances and I know myself better than a test can tell me. I reflect and listen to all feedbacks my friends, staff give me. I have 2 mirrors. Of course, I am not saying I have not blind spots, but using a questionaire, if u have not awareness of yourself in the first place, how accurate your answers can be? *bullshit. Ok I know I am cyclical here.

But, there is one thing I agree with the presenter, it is that we all show our true colors only under distress/ stress.

I have personally seen how normal/ kind people turn into energy sapping, self-pity people who cannot pull themselves out when fate deal a bad set of cards. So I paid particular attentions of how we can pull ourselves out of this mental state, and hope I can help my wife's auntie. Well, she said we should have "gratitude, action, forgiveness, etc"

Sigh... Those who have these, don't fall into "hard times", these are qualities that

Keep one Saint and are defense mechanism.

But if someone already cracked under stress, how to give them "benevolence, forgiveness, positivity? Whatever. So, I think when u are having a good time, always practice gratitude, forgiveness etc. it's not for others, but also yourself when your turn come, you forgive yourself more readily and you move on. The last thing we want is to think we can hold the world in our hands when we are at the top of our game. I think I reached the top of my game already, I think I will still give kindness priority over asertiveness. Both my P and VP have told me I am too "lax" in my management. I kind of agree, but I told my VP during work review when asked about my weakness of "style" of leadership, "every style has it strengths and weaknesses, I am my style because I believe in it and I follow it" I am acutely aware that some people would have preferred a more structured and organized style. While I will continue to refine and improve, I dun think I will ever become someone else.

4) Goals review

Health-- no running at all, eating is in a big mess. I am also taking the lift.

Social-- Meeting up with friends is nice, and the best part is, I am listening more attentive to their stories and felt I am indeed fortunate.

Family -- spending more quality time with my dad, but still using my phone hehehe

Human capital -- Reading a bit more of materials related to my work, but have not found a "ah huh" book yet. Sighs...

Vision is quite there.

I found the passion in my work, and my demons are in check, perhaps until the next crisis.

5) Retiremment and recharging

I spent a good 1 week doing nothing. And I quite enjoy it. My P ask us what recharges us and share. My honest answers are:

1) doing nothing

2) reading

3) blogging

I only mentioned 2) for obvious reasons. During the holiday, I got the all the time in the world to blog, but quite no "灵感” ideas. The only post I think I enjoyed is the write up on Silverlake axis. But towards the end of holiday, when I start going back school for the last week, working, meeting teachers, I got my mojo back and I keep blogging.

So, I think I will never stop teaching as long as my health permits. But I think I will want to step down as HOD and concentrate on children/ pupils once "high pay" is no longer important. LOL

Friday, June 24, 2016

Consider what size of equity to cash will I be comfortable with. Which are the counters that I am willing to sit through 20-30% loss.

Which are the low-dividends companys with high correlation with STI.

In 10 min, I took the following actions:

1) Take contra loss of Silverlake axis (recently bought)

2) Sold Singapore Shipping at a profit

3) Reduce ST engineering at break even price

4) Reduce SCI at 30% loss.

With earlier sale of FST and CMPH, I am now about 50% cash.

Again, luck played a part. I was ready to start buying if market goes down enough before the vote, but surprising market keep going up and I just start a small position on Silverlake which exited too.

Hey, I panic and sold. I am a bad investor! Hmm, but I did what I plan to, I am feeling excited now instead of depressed or anxious. While I have quite a bit of skin in the game, I have started to hedge against Brexit earlier by selling and holding off my buying. I already have in my mind what I want to keep, and what are the counters that seem to be closely correlated with STI movement -- SCI and ST engineering. I believe they will follow the market down. The rest of my counters hardly fall more than any usual day and some surprising gain. (venture and MIT) I had quite a hard time accepting loss of 30% for SCI, but I let it go partially nonetheless.

Better to sell now, buy later than ironteeth and capulate later. If I am wrong, and Market do a V - shape recovery a few days later, I am fine too.

With my short experince in markets, I believe there is plenty of room for market to fall, at least 5-10% in the coming weeks. Why?

1) News scaremongering. I am not sure what is the real impact. But what will make good stories? Let me look at my crystal ball- "Who's next to leave Euro?"

"Impact on Euro and Germany", "Next currency crisis"

2) Most central banks have already QE, negative interest rate. To intervene in currency markets, u either raise interest rate or use your foreign reserves to intervene, or both. Nuclear option is to introduce curbs. Governments will try to stabilize and come out with joint statements, by short sellers is a force that is beyond governments, and the force is bigger now (according to Soros)

I set alerts on my existing counters and those on my radars. I know I cannot stop looking at the news and the counters, so I told myself not to do anything unless those alerts points are triggered. I am a kanchong spider, i always buy too early.

Wednesday, June 22, 2016

If you are Singaporean, and stayed in Ward B2 or C, without any upgrade, how adequate would your shield plan be?

It is enough, it seems (if you are not "choy suay" - super unlucky). Lets go through them one by one.First, operations/ procedures
https://www.moh.gov.sg/content/moh_web/home/costs_and_financing/hospital-charges/Total-Operation-Fees-By-procedure.html

I went through all the procedures listed, the highest Subsidized cost of operations is for Vitreous, at 75% it is $1976. $2K surgery claim is enough. The rest are well below 2K at 75 percentile. Only operations with more than 30 case studies are published.

Verdict:

Passed, and adequate, as long as you dun "chow suay" and dun belong to the above 75% percentile.

Next Average bill test.

Above illustration for Public hospital-surgical specialties. With the exception of KKH and NHC, all are covered by $700 room and board insurance provided by Medishield. By average, I assume it is 50 percentile. Average total bill would include surgical costs, it is rather blurry here as it would depend on the number of stays in the hospital. I would think using 90% percentile would be quite a safe bet. Assume 3 days inpatient stay and 1 day in ICU, insurance would cover up to 5K, assume 4 days inpatient and 2 days ICU it would cover up to 6K. I would go through the procedures that required longer days and most operations take only 1 -4 days. So looking at the 90 percentile, you would be safe at long as you dun go SGH.

Verdict:

Passed, and adequate, as long as you dun "chow suay" and dun belong to the above 95% percentile.

Next long stay treatment with stays above 7 days.

They are:

1)Back problems (Serious)

2) Diabetics with serious implications

3) Stroke with and without serious implications

4) Lungs infections/ cancer

5) Kidney and urinary infections

6) Hip replacement

7) Heart Surgery

You can down the excel form this website The following conditions will be inadequate as subsidized surgery would already exceed 2K :

Condition:

Heart
angiography (Coronary angiography) - overnight stay

Condition
Description:

Admission
for heart angiography procedure (with no occurrence of Heart Attack in this
admission) and without cardiac ablation; no serious complications

Ward
B2

Hospital

Volume1

Average
Length Of Stay (days)2

50th
Percentile Bill Size ($)3

90th
Percentile Bill Size ($)4

CGH

69

3.0

2,001

3,119

KTPH

69

3.3

1,713

3,163

NHC

256

2.7

2,448

3,484

NUH

111

2.9

1,818

2,653

TTSH

113

2.9

1,488

2,470

Ward
C

Hospital

Volume1

Average
Length Of Stay (days)2

50th
Percentile Bill Size ($)3

90th
Percentile Bill Size ($)4

CGH

104

2.5

1,358

2,554

KTPH

77

3.2

1,460

2,683

NHC

227

3.0

1,729

3,229

NUH

199

3.0

1,345

2,070

TTSH

140

2.8

1,075

2,839

Day
Surgery (Subsidised)

Hospital

Volume1

Average
Length Of Stay (days)2

50th
Percentile Bill Size ($)3

90th
Percentile Bill Size ($)4

NHC

114

1.0

1,989

3,935

Condition:

Heart
angioplasty (Coronary angioplasty)

Condition
Description:

Percutaneous
Transluminal Coronary Angioplasty (PTCA); procedure to enlarge a narrowing in
a heart vessel with a stent; no serious complications

Ward
B2

Hospital

Volume1

Average
Length Of Stay (days)2

50th
Percentile Bill Size ($)3

90th
Percentile Bill Size ($)4

CGH

87

1.8

5,222

7,105

KTPH

38

1.9

6,288

7,757

NHC

174

2.3

7,570

11,871

NUH

79

2.2

5,157

8,039

TTSH

80

2.2

8,383

14,423

Ward
C

Hospital

Volume1

Average
Length Of Stay (days)2

50th
Percentile Bill Size ($)3

90th
Percentile Bill Size ($)4

CGH

175

1.5

4,050

5,914

KTPH

85

1.7

5,768

10,486

NHC

195

2.5

6,309

10,526

NUH

185

1.8

3,425

5,163

TTSH

106

1.9

7,986

12,463

Day
Surgery (Subsidised)

Hospital

Volume1

Average
Length Of Stay (days)2

50th
Percentile Bill Size ($)3

90th
Percentile Bill Size ($)4

NHC

551

1.0

7,708

12,173

This would be a nightmare for those under Medishield

Condition:

Stroke
with serious complications

Condition
Description:

Admission
for stroke, with serious complications and/or comorbidities

Ward
B2

Hospital

Volume1

Average
Length Of Stay (days)2

50th
Percentile Bill Size ($)3

90th
Percentile Bill Size ($)4

CGH

85

15.4

3,917

10,728

KTPH

82

13.8

4,364

8,366

NUH

91

11.8

3,761

8,971

SGH

107

13.3

4,627

11,936

TTSH

197

18.9

6,323

13,733

Ward
C

Hospital

Volume1

Average
Length Of Stay (days)2

50th
Percentile Bill Size ($)3

90th
Percentile Bill Size ($)4

CGH

336

17.2

3,602

8,152

KTPH

324

17.2

3,972

8,004

NUH

204

16.0

3,798

11,025

SGH

164

18.2

6,041

13,786

TTSH

446

22.8

4,251

10,254

The Expenses look scary but it should be covered by the room and charge, 10 days of ICU care would already allow you to claim up to 12K

Verdict:

I looked through all 81 excel sheets and only found 1 condition that would bust the mediashield coverage, however, do note that some conditions state the surgery costs are not reflected.

Conclusion:

I believed Mediashield is meant to cover as much people at a as low possible cost as possible, so some outlayers are excluded.

So, the biggest item that could throw your plan to disarray is surgery, so if money is really not too much of an issue to you, go for the lowest IP plan that covers surgery as "per charged", and you get a upgrade to B1 ward.

Please note that I am excluding private care totally as an option here.